Recently, in countries and regions all over the world, electric power supply systems are being converted from “vertical integration” models to “structural separation” models in which the electricity generation, electricity transmission, electricity distribution, and retailing tasks are allocated, and there is a tendency to progress an electricity market liberalization. In the “structural separation” electric power supply system, a “transmission system operator” required to stably supply electric power needs to, in order to adjust (i.e., balance) supply and demand in the system, ensure that there is reserve power in a power supply capacity in preparation for changes in the amount of short-term power consumption, accidents at the power station, drops in the generation of renewable energy, and other such cases. To achieve this, a balancing market (a power transaction market that starts prior to the actual supply and demand) is established by the “transmission system operator,” and not only a monetary value relating to the amount of energy when energy consumption is actually reduced for the sake of balancing, but a monetary value relating to the energy control capacity (reserve power) by which reductions are controlled in accordance with requests from the “transmission system operator” are created.
For example, as is stated in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2013-230051, power consumption in the case of no power reduction (baseline), which is referred to in Patent Literature 1 as a negawatt reference value, needs to be properly estimated in order to pay out a value for reduced power or reserve power.